


Templeton, Iowa

by kynical



Category: World War Z - Max Brooks
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kynical/pseuds/kynical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When faced with monsters tough decisions must be made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Templeton, Iowa

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nightwalker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightwalker/gifts).



**TEMPLETON, IOWA**

 **[Doctor Helen Arnak, former Head of Oncology at St. Christopher Memorial, greets me from behind her desk. The desk has been cleared of all items except a tan folder and a syringe and bottle. A tall woman in her mid-fifties, with graying hair, she hardly resembles the fiery-eyed monster the Catholic League has painted her as or the starry-eyed defender of personal choice the Hemlock Society has branded her. Throughout the interview it's obvious the effort to sit upright is taxing her.]**

Before we begin; I just want to say that I regret what happened, but I'm in no way sorry for my actions.

 **  
_You're referring to the incident at St. Christopher Memorial?_   
**   
__

_Of course._

 _  
**  
_The deaths?_   
**   
_

She glares defiantly. If you've come here expecting me to say “I'm sorry” you can leave now.

 **  
_That's not why I came. You’ve never spoken in public about the events that took place there after the National Guard withdrawal. Why are you willing to now?_   
**

It’s now or never. **[She grimaces.]** I'm at the mercy of my disease's schedule these days.

 **  
_What happened at St. Christopher Memorial Doctor Arnak?_   
**

Hell is what happened. This was two days after Yonkers. There hadn't been any large-scale outbreak in our area given our geographic isolation. There was a sizable outbreak going on in Des Moines but the National Guard seemed to have it in hand. I wasn't even supposed to be at St. Christopher that weekend. I was covering for another doctor who'd refused to come in. I wasn't that concerned to be honest. I was more concerned with finding time to finish my article for _Issues in Oncology_. **[She shakes her head.]** What a fool I was.

I was in my office when the call from the Sheriff’s department came in. There were a large number of undead around the hospital and all over town. National Guard helicopters arrived to pick up the patients they could. They were not equipped to deal with the sickest patients. The last seven patients would have to wait till life flight helicopters could get there from Omaha. At worst we thought we’d have to wait 24 hours. We were wrong. So very, very wrong.

We lost power on the second day. There were two explosions from the direction of the utility plant. To this day I don’t know what caused them. Within two minutes our emergency generators kicked in. On the third day the generators failed. They weren't designed for long-term emergency use. Suddenly, alarms were going off everywhere as the life-support monitors, IV pumps, and ventilators switched to battery reserves. The air conditioning failed and a half-hour after that the battery reserves did as well. After that the only sounds were the moans of the undead and the moans of the patients. **[Her hands shake as she speaks.]**

It was August in Iowa. We were taking turns fanning patients. Nurses were doing constant rotations changing diapers and putting cold-water compresses to cool patients down. No one could sleep because of the patients and moans of the zombies. We were close to the breaking point.

Still I thought; all we have to do is hold out for another day at most. Rescue would surely be coming. The morning of the third day Grant, our nursing supervisor called, me over to the windows. The parking lot was a mass of undead. That wasn’t the horrifying thing though. He was pointing to the highway a mile-or-so in the distance. A National Guard convoy was heading west down the highway. They were heading away from us towards Omaha. Later I learned they were among the first units ordered to establish the Rocky Line.

We all knew then that no rescue would be taking place. We’d been abandoned. We had limited food, water, and medical supplies. We were already running low on pain medication and anti-anxiety medications. Our food supplies were lean: canned soup, graham crackers, bread, and saltines. If we were going to survive we'd have to escape. We couldn’t do that with the very ill patients we had. Nor could we just abandon them. The four of us met in the nurses’ lounge. There wasn’t any use agonizing over the obvious. I told them I’d made the decision to euthanize the patients.

 **  
_Just like that? Did anyone object?_   
**

Just like that. There was silence around the room and a few anguished looks. I said what we’d all been thinking but didn’t dare bring out in the open. As a department head, as an oncologist I was used to making tough decisions. As the only physician present I had to make this call. No use agonizing over it or discussing it. From an ethical standpoint and a practical one this was our only option. This makes me sound clinical and cold-blooded I know. I don’t deny that. I only knew two things at that point. I was going to survive and I was not going to leave those patients to suffer a horrifying death at the hands of fucking zombies.

I didn’t ask for assistance. And no one moved a muscle to stop me. Grant walked out of the room with me.

 **  
_What happened after that?_   
**

We went to the pharmacy and drew out vials of morphine and midazolam. I loaded the syringes and assured him that the patients would essentially go to sleep and die. That combination of medicine cuts down on respirations till you just stop breathing. He took three syringes and I took the other three.

 **  
_What did you tell the patients?_   
**

All of them were either unresponsive or sedated. If they'd been awake I would've been honest. I would’ve told them I was giving them something to relax and make them feel better. The closest anyone had to consciousness were a few incoherent moans. I injected my patients, three elderly women. I held each of their hands and told them it was okay to go. They went very quickly.

 **  
_What happened to the seventh patient?_   
**

**[She rubs a spot just above her left eye. Her voice is barely above a whisper.]**

This is where people say I really crossed the line. It would’ve been suicide to go out the locked doors. We could hear several undead thumping on the other side of it. We’d only seen two in the stairwell, a nurse and a paramedic both missing chunks of flesh from their arms. If I had to guess; the nurse had tried to flee to the fourth floor and been bitten in the stairwell by the paramedic. I was never able to see their name badges. Those two zombies were the only thing standing in our way from getting to the parking garage.

We had no training and my staff was terrified. I figured our best bet was a decoy to draw the zombies away from our group. Mr. Davies was our stroke patient. He’d been under medically-induced coma for days. He likely would not have woken up anyway. I went to find Grant.

I told him the plan; assured him I would make sure that Mr. Davies was deep enough so he wouldn’t feel anything. He threw up on my shoes, and walked back to the nurses’ lounge and told the rest of the staff to pack their bags we were leaving.

Two hours later we were ready to go. I drew another syringe with midazolam, transferred Mr. Davies to a gurney, and wheeled him just in front of the stairwell door. I could hear moaning and scraping from the other side. I injected Mr. Davies with double the usual dose. I met Grant and the others at the nurses’ station. Grant volunteered to open the door. And when. [She struggles for her words.] While those things were distracted we’d make a break for the stairwell.

It worked like a charm. Grant opened the door. Those two things came lurching in, saw Mr. Davies and didn’t give us a second thought. We saw a couple in the parking garage but they were on the other side away from the staff parking. Don’t ask me what happened to the others. I got into my Jeep and headed west. The same direction the National Guard was going.

You know the rest of the story: my arrest, the mistrial, the protocols.

 **  
_You wrote the first draft of the Arnak Protocols during the trial?_   
**

**[She nods.]** I had to do something while that self-righteous twit of a prosecutor painted me, and I quote, “A crazed, cowardly, and power-mad doctor.” The whole thing was an exercise in government hypocrisy. The government enacts the Redeker Plan and they call it a “tough decision.” That Colorado National Guard unit turns civilians away and watches them get eaten by a horde of zombies and they call it “Collateral damage.” I spare my patients a slow death by dehydration or getting eaten alive and they call it “murder.”

What I did was in keeping with the spirit of _primum non nocere_ \--the principle of first doing no harm. They can call it whatever they like. Without question, I killed them and condemned Mr. Davies to a terrible existence. Without question, I saved the lives of my staff. I saved lives and did my job. I’ve never denied that I crossed the line with my final action. What I did to that man was hideous and not supposed to happen. **[She rubs her chin]**. Then again, the dead weren’t supposed to rise either.

 **[Dr. Arnak died two hours after this interview. The official cause of death listed as intentional narcotics overdose. Four months after this interview the European Union officially adopted the Arnak Protocols.]**

**Author's Note:**

> The Arnak Protocols are designed to give medical professionals a set of ethical guidelines to follow in cases where patients do not have DNR orders specifically in cases of undead presence and natural disasters. They are as follows:
> 
> 1\. The presence of hopeless and unbearable suffering.  
> 2\. Undead presence.  
> 3\. No reasonable expectation of rescue.  
> 4\. Consultation of medical professionals has taken place.  
> 5\. Humane implementation of the termination.


End file.
